Yorktown!

The second stop of my tour of the Williamsburg area was of Yorktown. A very remarkable battlefield, and very well preserved, I have a photo at left of the field where the British surrendered to the American forces. Cornwallis was trapped at the York River where his retreat was blocked, and with a combined American/French force surrounding his army. His surrender though not literally the end, was essentially the end of the war with England. The park charged a $10 admission, but it was also good to get into "not too far away Jamestown". I drove there from Williamsburg via the Colonial Parkway....a remarkable road!!!
You can see a lot at the battlefield. There is a walking tour (here by some of the guns used in the battle, a ranger gives a talk on the battle which happened there), as well as earthworks, and the house there the British and Americans met to write the terms of surrender. Unlike the Civil War, it was a more gentlemanly (if that is the correct term for such as thing) war with lots of rules (which Americans as well as the British often bent if not flat out broke). Weapons in the day were much more primitive than they would be around 1861-1865, but took quite a toll over the years of the Revolutionary War. Have been to some battlefields of the period in the Carolinas, this was easily the best I have seen from that war.
I also got out to see modern Yorktown. This is an overview of the Yorktown Riverwalk; which has a number of stores, a bridge, some interesting housing just a very, very nice town.
I could have spent many more hours in Yorktown, but this was a quick exploration of the area and what it had to offer...plus I had a ticket that would get me into Jamestown. So though it was getting late in the day, I got back on the remarkable Colonial Parkway, and headed toward Jamestown...the site of the first English colony in North America.